Non stuzzicate la Zanzara / Don't Sting the Mosquito (Olaf Möller Masterclass, Sodankylä 2026) Olaf Möller /

Lina Wertmüller: Non stuzzicate la Zanzara / Don't Sting the Mosquito (IT 1967) with Giulietta Masina (Maria Cristina, Rita's mother), Rita Pavone (Rita Santangelo) and Giancarlo Giannini (Paolo Randi, Rita's boyfriend).

Lina Wertmüller: Non stuzzicate la Zanzara / Don't Sting the Mosquito (IT 1967) with Rita Pavone (Rita Santangelo) and Giulietta Masina (Maria Cristina, Rita's mother).

IT 1967. PC: Mondial Televisione Film • P: Sergio Bonotti, Gilberto Carbone. D+SC: Lina Wertmüller. DP: Dario Di Palma - colour: Technostampa - scope • ED: Franco Fraticelli • PD: Enrico Job • Cost: Enrico Job • S: Giulio Tagliacozzo • M: Bruno Canfora • Song lyrics co-writer: Lina Wertmüller • C: Rita Pavone, Giancarlo Giannini, Raffaele Pisu, Giulietta Masina •  loc: Rome • Copy from: Titanus, RAI • DCP • in Italian • subtitled in English • announced duration: 124 min - screening duration 90 min

    Sodankylän Elokuvajuhlat / Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF) 2026: Olaf Möller Masterclass: 60’s musicals – The Way We Once Danced Through the Days

    Olaf Möller Masterclass

    Iso Teltta, 14 June 2026

AA: Rita Pavone, "the Mosquito of Turin" ("la Zanzara di Torino"), also known as "the Carrot Top ("Pel di Carota") because of her red hair, starred in two movies directed by Lina Wertmüller. Here the co-stars include Giulietta Masina from the great tradition of Italian theatre and cinema and Giancarlo Giannini who got his first leading roles in the Zanzara movies. I confess I did not recognize Giannini here!

Michelangelo Antonioni had just shot Blow Up in London, but Rita Pavone and Lina Wertmüller brought the Mod attitude and Carnaby Street fashion of Swinging London to Rome. 

It is a musicarelli, a pop film, openly influenced by Richard Lester's Beatles movies, but with a defiantly original attitude. This goofiness is all-Italian.

I like Rita Pavone as a singer. This was still the time when great singers sang with full scope and presence, not only in Italy but worldwide. Rita Pavone was popular in Finland, too, and our counterpart, Katri Helena, did a great Finnish-language cover of her hit "Lui".

Pavone mostly sings Italian originals but also includes a couple of fine covers, including "Gimme Some Lovin", the 1966 hit by The Spencer Davis Group. "Bye Bye Baby" from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is also on the songlist, but it is not among the highlights.

There is a Finnish word, "unelmahöttöä" (coined by Erkki Tuomioja) meaning the "cotton candy", "zucchero filato" of daydreams, and this is the world of Zanzara, indulging in fantasy while making fun of it. This is the teenage world between childhood and adulthood.

Wes Anderson might like this movie.

This is the world of the musical comedy, taking place in the Neverland between dream and reality. It is superficial and profound at once. La vida es sueño. "We are such stuff that dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep".

Pavone & Wertmüller navigate confidently in this special zone. They have an instinctive sense in the flight of the imagination, the space of the musical flow and the riptide of emotions. 

In light entertainment mode, Don't Sting the Mosquito is also a rebel saga, the young daughter claiming independence with swashbuckler derring-do. More specifically, it is a saga of female agency, the daughter even becoming a role model for her tradwife mother.

The extended blackface sequence is offensive and embarrassing. Rita Pavone needs a disguise, but there could have been better alternatives.

All sources give the duration of 124 minutes, but this screening ran 90 minutes. The digital restoration is perfect, and the audacious colour scheme with lots of oranges and violets has been beautifully preserved.

I have a special affection for film directors as songwriters in their own movies, like Lina Wertmüller here.

SONG LIST

La Zanzara (main theme)

La Svizzera  (co-lyr. Lina Wertmüller)

Una notte intera (co-lyr. Lina Wertmüller)

Tu guardi lei  (co-lyr. Lina Wertmüller)

Cuore

Plip

Scimmia

Perchè due non fa tre

Non è un peccato

Ma che te ne importa se va

Solo tu

Garage Beat!

Gira gira

Questo nostro amore  (co-lyr. Lina Wertmüller)

La canzone

[In the end credits, 16 songs are credited, but the names flashed by too fast for me to write them down].

Olaf Möller (MSFF 2026): "This is most decidedly not the kind of film folks on average would expect from Lina Wertmüller: a straightforward exercise in popular cinema. She made four of them inbetween her frivolously Fellinian debut The Basilisks (1963) and her true international breakthrough as an autrice, The Seduction of Mimi (1972): a commedia all’italiana omnibus, two musicarelli and a western – all being straightforward entertainments as well as parodies of their respective genres."

"Considering her penchant for judiciously dosed histrionics and a sense for the grotesque at heart of all that life we call real, it feels fitting that she should show a curious excellence at doing musicals. Set in good parts in an academy for Swiss Guards, Don’t Sting the Mosquito perplexes among other things with a minimalist song-and-dance number featuring papal soldiers-in-the-making singing “Switzerland!” while wiggling in synch with their halberds (after an earlier joke about turning battle banners into diapers), a delirious number in split-screen, a bonkers low-key hop-around in wild west drag, and an overall use of mauve that leaves even LSD-savvy viewers in a state of daze. For all the love and admiration Lina Wertmüller is more than due: if only she had made just a few more movies like Don’t Sting the Mosquito…!" Olaf Möller

Olaf Möller (MSFF 2026): "Tämä ei ole filmi, jollaista ihmiset Lina Wertmülleriltä odottaisivat: Don’t Sting the Mosquito on suoraviivainen populaarielokuva. Hän teki sellaisia neljä huolettoman felliniläisen debyyttinsä I basilischin (1963) ja varsinaisen kansainvälisen auteur-läpimurtonsa Mafian uhrin (1972) välisenä aikana: yhden commedia all’italiana -elokuvan, kaksi musicarellia ja yhden westernin – jotka kaikki ovat samanaikaisesti suoraviivaisia viihde-elokuvia ja omien lajityyppiensä parodioita."

"Ottaen huomioon Wertmüllerin taipumuksen harkiten annosteltuun teatraalisuuteen sekä hänen ymmärryksensä kaiken todelliseksi kutsumamme elämän sydämessä olevasta groteskiudesta, tuntuu sopivalta, että hän osoittautuu erinomaiseksi musikaalien tekijäksi. Suurilta osin sveitsiläiskaartin akatemiaan sijoittuva Don’t Sting the Mosquito hämmentää muun muassa minimalistisella laulu- ja tanssiesityksellä, jossa tulevat paavin sotamiehet laulavat “Sveitsi!” ketkutellen tahdissa hilpariensa kanssa, houreisella split screen -numerolla, sekopäisellä hypähtelyllä villin lännen dragissa ja yltäkylläisellä violetin värin käytöllä, joka saisi LSD-kokeneenkin katsojan pyörälle päästään. Vaikka kaikki Lina Wertmüllerille suotu rakkaus ja ihailu on enemmän kuin ansaittua: kunpa hän olisi tehnyt vain muutaman tällaisen elokuvan lisää!" Olaf Möller